We all have our biases. The claim here is that AARO are trustworthy when they say there are no NH visitors because they are government selected. You can make the same claim about the government-selected Stratton, or James Lacatski (who says he's worked on, and entered a craft in a hanger somewhere).
The trustworthiness here isn't being ascribed to the believability or likelihood of the story - it rests on credibility of the source, based on government selection. Some of us prefer one appointee, some of us prefer others.
I think we should think about statements given by AARO, NASA etc. and the the claims of Jay Stratton differently.
They might not have equal credibility even though AARO/ NASA staff are effectively government employees as Stratton was.
To think they carry equivalent evidential weight might be to use a variant of the "argument from authority" logical fallacy; "AARO and NASA staff are government employees, Stratton was a government employee, therefore when Stratton talks about extraterrestrials what he says has the same standing as public statements from AARO or NASA."
Statements from AARO, NASA, the then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence quoted below are the findings/ opinions of government agencies or of individuals then in service / in a relevant political post. They can be seen as on-the-record statements reflecting the assessment made by AARO and NASA, and the opinions of two individuals representing their respective offices in the US armed forces and Congressional oversight of intelligence agencies.
White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre referred questions about Grusch's complaint to the Department of Defense (DoD). In a statement, Sue Gough, spokesperson for the Pentagon, said: "To date, AARO (All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office) has not discovered any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programs regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of any extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently. AARO is committed to following the data and its investigation wherever it leads."
General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, gave an interview to The Washington Times on August 6, 2023, in which he stated that he had never encountered evidence that would verify the claims made by Grusch regarding "quote-unquote 'aliens' or that there's some sort of cover-up program". Milley added that he was unsurprised that such rumors would circulate and be believed by some within an organization as large as the U.S. military
NASA stated: "One of NASA's key priorities is the search for life elsewhere in the universe, but so far, NASA has not found any credible evidence of extraterrestrial life and there is no evidence that UAPs are extraterrestrial.
Representative Mike Turner, the chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said, "every decade there's been individuals who've said the United States has such pieces of unidentified flying objects that are from outer space" and that "there's no evidence of this and certainly it would be quite a conspiracy for this to be maintained, especially at this level"
Quotes from Wikipedia, David Grusch UFO whistleblower claims
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Grusch_UFO_whistleblower_claims
Jay Stratton's public claims have been made after he left government employment, not at the time.
They are extraordinary claims backed by (at this time) no testable evidence, despite having apparently happened regularly over a few years.
It might be unlikely that they are objectively accurate descriptions of actual events. E.g., I do not believe there was a bipedal wolflike creature in Stratton's home, because I don't believe bipedal wolflike creatures exist on Earth, and I think it's vastly unlikely wolfmen are visiting Earth from elsewhere. Despite Anubis, the popularity of werewolves in fiction and wolflike aliens in SF (one of my favorites being Dan Dare's ally Rok in comic 2000 AD) it will take more than an anecdotal account to persuade me they really exist.
Stratton was involved in the founding of AAWSAP/ AATIP;
External Quote:
DIA terminated the program due to a cited lack of merit and lack of utility in the products Bigelow produced for DIA's mission.
PDF, History and Origin of KONA BLUE, AARO
https://www.aaro.mil/Portals/136/PD...History_and_Origin_of_KONA_BLUE_FINAL_508.pdf
AAWSAP/ AATIP didn't advance our knowledge of UAP or much else. Its main actions seem to have been the commissioning of papers about various subjects, all of which (bar the original version of one about lasers) are in the public domain. None are original practical research papers, none tell us anything new about UAP/ UFOs or potential adversary aircraft, some are of doubtful value and are from/ connected to long-standing UFO proponents who (amongst other things) believe Uri Gellar has psychic powers and remote viewing is a thing.
More about this on thread
The Origins of AAWSAP and elsewhere on this forum (
@NorCal Dave has done much work on this).
Despite the circumstances of AAWSAP's scrapping, it seems someone nonetheless decided Stratton was a suitable candidate (first director?) for the UAP Task Force, dates seem to be August 2020 - November 2021 (Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All-domain_Anomaly_Resolution_Office, The Black Vault
https://www.theblackvault.com/docum...ing-between-uap-task-force-and-nasa-released/). Brennan McKernan took over as director in June 2021 (pro-UFO claims website Silva Report, "Brennan McKernan, UAP Task Force Director", 21 June 2021
https://silvarecord.com/2021/06/23/brennan-mckernan-uap-task-force-director/).
Stratton's tenure (at UAPTF as a Congressionally-mandated committee) appears to have been short.
In June 2021, the Pentagon published "Preliminary Assessment: Unidentified Aerial Phenomena" (Wikipedia "UFO Report (U.S. Intelligence)"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_Report_(U.S._Intelligence)), at least partly based on the UAPTF's findings:
External Quote:
The report was supposed to give "detailed analysis of unidentified aerial phenomena data and intelligence" that had been compiled by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) and the FBI.
...The report found that the UAPTF was unable to identify causes of the observations found in 143 [of 144] reports. [This radically contrasts with other large-scale studies of UFO sightings, e.g. Blue Book, which indicate the majority of UFO reports have possible mundane explanations, John J.]
...It did not link the sightings to extraterrestrial life, with officials saying "We have no clear indications that there is any nonterrestrial explanation for them — but we will go wherever the data takes us".
No mention of retrieved alien craft, which implies either Jay Stratton had no evidence for this or he withheld it, including from Congress.
I think it's implausible that Stratton had better access to reliable US DoD/ DoW information about UFO reports/ claims
after leaving UAPTF.
The
New York Post published an article critical of Stratton, "
'Crazy' UFO-believing Pentagon bosses missed spy craft for years", 21 March 2023, Todd Farley and Steven Greenstreet
https://nypost.com/2023/03/21/ufo-believing-pentagon-bosses-missed-spy-craft-for-years/
External Quote:
Documents released via the Freedom of Information Act reveal that AAWSAP/Skinwalker Ranch alum Jay Stratton provided UFO information to a Pentagon press office responsible for crafting official statements to the media.
And who was in charge, during the Trump administration, when the Pentagon created a UFO Task Force to investigate incursions of unknown objects over America?
Stratton — who believes the ghosts and creatures of Skinwalker Ranch are real — officially headed up these Pentagon investigations for years.
The "chief scientist" of this Pentagon task force was Travis Taylor, who is and was a co-star of "Ancient Aliens" on the History Channel. He currently stars on "The Secret of Skinwalker Ranch" on the same network.
... ...
Stratton and Taylor's Pentagon Task Force was charged with identifying things like Chinese spycraft flying over American airspace. But reportedly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, they only saw "UFOs."
In a new Washington Examiner piece, national security reporter Tom Rogan writes that Stratton's Pentagon UFO task force "was diverting government resources to researching truly unconventional UFOs at the expense of addressing Chinese balloons" and that Jay Stratton "was reluctant" to confront the balloon problem.
A former DOD official, who worked with the task force and spoke to The Post on the condition of anonymity, said Stratton was "a complete nutjob" and that most of what the task force did was a "complete and utter waste of money."
The official claimed Stratton would talk about "the wolf man stalking his house" and other spooky stories stemming from Skinwalker Ranch.
... ...
"We had to go to leadership and tell them we're done with his s–t," the source said.
Stratton did not reply to The Post's requests for comment.
He retired from the Pentagon in 2022 and, soon after, military officials were reportedly able to retroactively determine some of the "UFOs" were actually spy balloons.
It appears that a small group of UFO believers distracted the media and Congress into looking for extraterrestrial UFOs while, in reality, terrestrial spycraft were brazenly flying over America with impunity.
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